This week in affordable housing news, Senator Wiener’s high-profile housing density bill, SB 50, did not advance out of the Senate before a January legislative deadline—falling short of the 21 votes needed. After two days of deliberation and several rounds of voting, the measure received 18 yes votes and 15 noes, with 6 senators not voting. After the final vote, Senate Pro Tem Toni Atkins took to the floor to encourage legislators both for and against SB 50 to “step up” to address the state’s housing crisis—saying this was “not the end of the story” and pledging a major housing production bill “will happen this year.” Governor Newsom shared a similar message, urging Senator Atkins to “continue this fight.” In a statement, CHC committed to supporting a renewed push for affordable housing production—saying California’s unprecedented shortage of 1.4 million homes affordable to lower-income households demands an “unprecedented response.”

As the Legislature continues to seek agreement on how to respond to the housing crisis, NBC News released a wrenching report on how California’s homelessness crisis continues to surge. With nearly half of Los Angeles County residents paying 50 percent of their income in rent, NBC says the LA housing authority is helping 130 people find housing every day—while another 150 fall into homelessness. “This is decades and decades of failures,” said Heidi Martson, interim executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. “It’s going to take time.” John Maceri, CEO of The People Concern, a social services provider, blamed the problem on a lack of job training—and widespread shortage of affordable housing.

In a positive development, the San Francisco Chronicle reports Asm. Buffy Wicks (D-Richmond) may have found a new place to get more housing built: underused church parking lots. As the Chronicle puts it, Wicks’s new “Yes In God’s Back Yard” push, outlined in AB 1851, would make it easier to build affordable housing on property owned by “faith-based organizations” by removing minimum parking requirements. Sen. Wiener, the Chronicle reports, is working on a companion bill that would change zoning rules to boost affordable development on land being used for religious purposes, as well. A real estate consultant told the Chronicle there are at least “40 to 50” churches in the Bay Area interested in developing affordable housing on their land. UC-Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation is working on a statewide inventory of potential sites.

STATE HOUSING POLICIES

California bill to dramatically increase homebuilding in the state falls short for third year in a row
Los Angeles Times
California lawmakers failed to pass high-profile legislation on Wednesday to dramatically increase homebuilding in the state — the third year in a row that the effort has stalled. Senate Bill 50, which would allow construction of mid-rise apartment complexes near transit and job centers and fourplexes in most single-family neighborhoods throughout California, was opposed by state senators who said the measure took too much power away from local governments and failed to sufficiently address low-income housing needs.

California’s most controversial homebuilding bill just died. What will Newsom do now?
CalMatters
Developers, landlords, Facebook, construction unions, the state Chamber of Commerce, Realtors, environmental groups and even the AARP wanted to see the bill pass. So did big city mayors including San Francisco’s London Breed and San Jose’s Sam Liccardo. Not to mention Sen. Toni Atkins, Democratic leader of the state Senate, who typically has a pretty big say in which bills make it out of her chamber.

Gov. Newsom admits he stretched housing truth about a 3.5 million-unit shortfall
Mercury News
Gov. Gavin Newsom has recanted his repeated and insistent suggestion that the state’s housing challenges require 3.5 million homes to be swiftly built. He recently described this target — based on a flawed and outdated consultant’s study — as a “stretch goal,” whatever that means. Plus, he says he’s tossed that math and is having new construction goals formulated. Sadly, the governor’s very public stretching of the housing-shortage truth only further hardens the lines drawn between the warring factions trying to solve (and/or profit from) the chore of sheltering 40 million Californians.

Editorial: SB 50 is dead. Again. L.A. lawmakers need to stop stonewalling and come up with a housing solution
Los Angeles Times
Once again, Los Angeles-area lawmakers have come together in Sacramento to block Senate Bill 50, which was the most significant and far-reaching bill proposed this year to help address California’s dire housing shortage. And they did it without offering any meaningful alternative proposal.

Editorial: SB 50’s failure exposes California Democrats’ ineptitude on affordable housing crisis
Sacramento Bee
Do California’s elected leaders truly want to fix California’s housing crisis? It doesn’t seem like it, given the failure of Senate Bill 50, which fell three votes shy of passing last night. The bill lost a floor vote 18-15. Oddly, six senators abstained, apparently refusing to pick sides on a major bill to address the most important issues facing the state: housing and homelessness.

Opinion: L.A. politicians killed SB 50. So what’s their plan to fix the housing crisis? They don’t have one
Los Angeles Times
Once again, it appears that Los Angeles-area lawmakers have collectively blocked Senate Bill 50, the most significant housing bill in California. Even worse, they did it without offering any meaningful proposal that could reverse the state’s debilitating housing shortage. The bill fell three votes short of passing the Senate — with nine Los Angeles-area senators either voting no or abstaining, The Times reported.

HOUSING CRISIS

Everything You Think You Know About Housing Is Probably Wrong
New York Times
Poised on a cliff above First Avenue, Tudor City was conceived during the 1920s by the storied developer Fred F. French as a high-rise community for thousands of middle-class residents. A century later, it remains a throwback to the early glamour days of skyscraper living: a dozen brick towers fancifully decorated with half-timbered lobbies, stone crests and other mock-Tudor details.

Yes in God’s Back Yard: Bay Area’s new answer to the housing crisis might be church property
San Francisco Chronicle
Before St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church closed for good in December, its Sunday services were often lonely affairs. One week there would be six worshipers, the next week seven. On Dec. 13, when the white wooden building at 43rd Avenue and Judah Street in the Sunset District held its final farewell service, just 20 congregants showed up to bid the church adieu, filling only the first few pews in the spacious sanctuary.

LOCAL HOUSING INITIATIVES

Oakland councilwoman introduces ordinance that would give renters first right to buy their home
San Francisco Chronicle
An Oakland councilwoman introduced legislation Thursday that she said would give landlords an incentive to offer their tenants first right of refusal when selling the property. The proposal by Councilwoman Nikki Fortunato Bas is still raw and doesn’t yet specify what the incentive would be.

HOMELESSNESS

‘New wave of homelessness’: Can regionalism, prevention fight tsunami of unsheltered in Bay Area?
San Francisco Chronicle
Elester Shelton spent 20 years off and on in the streets of San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley — sometimes housed, always poor even though he often worked as a roofer, always hoping for help. It wasn’t until he landed at a homeless aid center in Oakland a year ago that things began to turn for him.

California just finished counting its homeless — a tally sure to be inaccurate, and politically weaponized
CalMatters
With yellow vests and flashlights, over 200 volunteers fanned out across Fresno to count homeless people on Tuesday night. Along the railway, one group walked by a freight container with a mattress and shoes inside, and past a dirt cot enclosed in a tarp pegged to a bush. The people who likely slept there the night before were no longer present, and thus not counted.

‘Roach motels’ beat being homeless. But why can’t California innovate on housing?
Sacramento Bee
We called them “roach motels,” but not for the reason you might think. True, roaches usually infested the seedy motels my family sometimes called home. But the nickname came from the Roach Motel insect traps marketed with the tagline: “Roaches check in but they don’t check out.” See, you didn’t need a deposit to move into a motel, but the rent was high enough to ensure that you never saved up enough money to escape. You got stuck.

How California’s homelessness crisis surged
NBC News
The only thing that kept LaRae Cantley going was her three children. She grew up surrounded by poverty and addiction, but despite her difficulties, she never expected to be homeless. Yet one day in the late 1990s, a sheriff’s deputy knocked on the door of her South Los Angeles house and told her and her husband they had five minutes to vacate the property.